Boxing Stance v Kickboxing Stance v MMA Stance

[Biggiebrother]

Can someone details the subtle differences between the three ?

Preferable with photos, would be cool if one of the more experienced fighters here took photos of themselves in these 3 stances

[perfy]

Boxing stance tends to have lead leg forward and rear leg behind with a narrow stance shoulder width or less. Your lead shoulder and rear shoulder should be inline that is your medial deltoid of the lead shoulder is facing your opponent. This makes sprawling harder.

A kick boxing stance would have legs farther apart, more than shoulder width and your more squared off to your opponent. Your lead shoulder and trailing shoulders should form a 45degree angle to your opponent whereas the boxing stance is is perpendicular.

The mma stance varies but can nearly parallel to you oponent, both shoulders facing your opponent.

The easiest way to see the difference is to first stand in boxing stance, perpendicular to opponent then move your trailing leg out until it becomes parallel with your right shoulder. I'll post pics later if I can get around to it.

[TommyHearns]

Originally Posted by perfy

Boxing stance tends to have lead leg forward and rear leg behind with a narrow stance shoulder width or less. Your lead shoulder and rear shoulder should be inline that is your medial deltoid of the lead shoulder is facing your opponent. This makes sprawling harder.

A kick boxing stance would have legs farther apart, more than shoulder width and your more squared off to your opponent. Your lead shoulder and trailing shoulders should form a 45degree angle to your opponent whereas the boxing stance is is perpendicular.

The mma stance varies but can nearly parallel to you oponent, both shoulders facing your opponent.

The easiest way to see the difference is to first stand in boxing stance, perpendicular to opponent then move your trailing leg out until it becomes parallel with your right shoulder. I'll post pics later if I can get around to it.

Well in my observations you are wrong.

Boxing Stance:
Varies tremendously because you don't need to worry about getting caught in head clinch OR leg kicks. You have guys like Ali who would dance around with narrow stance, guys like SRL and RJJ who had a a wide balanced stance with rear foot very backward, and crouch fighters like Tyson and Cuevas who bent forward a lot with front foot and rear foot much closer together. Even hand positioning varies a lot, some guys keep hands up extremely high others very low.

So sorry but perfy is wrong, so many different stances has been used in boxing.

Muay Thai Stance:
Much more strict because fighters need to have legs ready to check kicks, and must be upright to avoid neck clinch and knees. Their hand positioning is more strict to avoid getting arm broken. Their stance restricts lots of dancing movement.

MMA Stance
Well i guess a mix between boxing, Muay Thai and wrestling stance. Like Chuck Lidell. Self explanatory.

[blanko]

there are many types of mma stances....

[Chad Hamilton]

it's personal preference I do believe.

[Gavin LeFever]

boxing is square because you dont have to protect your nuts.

kb is one leg forward and you're anticipating that you might have to suddenly block a kick/knee/elbow/punch.

mma stance is what style you're fighting. the style you fight tells you the stance you will bring. if you you dont feel comfortable going toe-to-toe striking then you're either to far to strike and moving around or you're trying to grab him, tie, clinch--just too close for most big KO shots and you're working to setup a takedown.

[perfy]

I was focused on a more traditional boxing stance but I guess you're right in that it can vary quite a bit. The reason for this is there's less types of attacks so you can be lenient on your stance. You don't have to worry about blocking various types of kicks, takedowns, kness etc.

Sudo has unorothodox mma stance as well as number of other fighters. But of course I was talking about a general stance that a novice would learn. Once they have the basics down they can develop their own style and stance that best suits their attributes. So novices are more apt to have a general form whereas experienced practioners can be more free form.